MOSCOW: Russia, one of the world’s largest wheat exporters, is not expected to change its current regime of taxes on grain exports, sources said on Friday, following proposals to change them. Concerns over the possibility of tougher limits on Russia’s foreign sales of wheat sent global prices to a one-month high earlier this week.
However, the agriculture ministry proposed removing or cutting the export tax on wheat, while imposing one on barley and corn. “They will not change anything,” one industry source said on Friday after a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, who is in charge of agriculture. Dvorkovich’s spokeswoman, Aliya Samigullina, told Reuters that no decision had been made at the meeting.
Any decision to reduce the tax would have been a blow for other exporters, including the European Union, the United States and Argentina, a German trader said. “This would keep Russian competition in wheat export markets high at a time when falling oil prices have reduced purchasing power in some of the biggest Middle East grain importing countries,” he said.
Russia could yet consider a downgrade of the wheat export tax and will decide on the matter on February 3, Dmitry Rylko, the head of agriculture consultancy IKAR said. But officials are unlikely to approve this idea, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.
